Technicalities
by TheSpikyDurian
Summary: AU! There's something weird about the old Mystery Shack, and Dipper and Mabel Pines are the individuals unfortunate enough to inherit it… well, sort of. One can't technically inherit something if the previous owners are still alive, right? Chapter 4: "Got any sunscreen?"
1. Chapter 1

There's something odd about the Mystery Shack and Dipper's not talking about the overpriced souvenirs or the creepy taxidermied exhibits or even Mr Mystery - a cheerful gopher-like man-child called… Zeus?

Who even names their kid _Zeus_?

Anyway, Zeus - _I think it's Soos_ , Mabel says at some point, a thoughtful look overtaking her usually bright and cheery grin - doesn't seem to be the cause of the oddness surrounding the Shack, although that is not to say the chubby man isn't hiding something.

In fact, Dipper's almost certain Soos is hiding something - granted, the man doesn't have a single malicious bone in his body, but the male Pines twin can't imagine how such a nice guy can end up in such a dodgy place, using _lies_ as a source of income. It's incomprehensible.

Then again, this whole business begins with something that doesn't make much sense.

...

If Mabel and Dipper have to agree on when it all started, they'll both say it started when high school finished.

The last day finishes normally enough - full of excitement that comes with the end of school - and then they arrive home to find their parents waiting with a letter that'd only arrived earlier that day.

Then, the bombshells start dropping, bombshells like, _oh, by the way, you have two great uncles but they're dead and apparently they've left this old house up in Oregon for you. Well, not you-you, but for the rest of the family, and since we're the last of the Pines, it's technically for you._

Of course, their parents word it a little more delicately.

(Mabel chooses and uses the appropriate response. "...What the hey-hey?", mainly because they didn't even know of any great-uncles, just their Grandpa Shermie.)

For a while, Dipper and Mabel decide to leave the house alone - because it's the end of school, and they should be celebrating and partying and whatnot, but as per usual, Dipper's curiosity kicks in and then Mabel has to go with him because they're twins, and twins stick together, and wherever they go, they go _together_.

And off to Gravity Falls they go, on a rickety old bus with a dangerously sputtering engine that threatens to stop halfway.

By the time the bus limps into the sleepy town, it's already near sun-down. The twins - or rather, their grumbling stomachs - decide to visit the town's diner, where they're served pancakes-

("Mabel, you can't have pancakes for dinner. We're nearly eighteen, for goodness sake!"

"Try and stop me, bro-bro!")

-and other responsible foods that adults eat.

It's there that they ask the locals about the abandoned house in the woods - only to hear that it isn't abandoned, at all.

"Oh, that?" Lazy Susan laughs. "That's the old Mystery Shack. Soos' been running ever since… ah, well...er, never mind all that!"

Susan doesn't bother to elaborate, and before Dipper can sink his teeth into this new mystery, other patrons of the diner add in their own observations.

"It's a tourist trap!"

"Weird noises come outta that place at night!"

("That's just the plumbing."

"Oh, right.")

"It's got termites!"

"Soos holds the best parties - the exit fee's a killer, though."

"That place is totally haunted," a hoodied, dark-haired man remarks, peering over the back of Mabel's seat and into the twins' booth. "There's this creepy old gargoyle that keeps moving around."

"How do you know?" Dipper asks, curious, oblivious to the _shushing_ motions the other patrons make at the hoodied man behind his back.

"Friend of mine - Wendy - works there," the man shrugs, quickly wisening up to the other townfolks' glares of _shut-it-Robbie-they're-outsiders_. "She never says much about it, though."

"Huh," Dipper mutters, more to himself than anyone else - and Mabel recognises the glazed look in his eyes. It's Dipper's _I'm-going-to-solve-this-mystery_ look, and it means sleepless nights and chewed pens and half-eaten shirts.

"Dipper," Mabel starts, but it's too late.

"Why don't we go take a look?" Dipper suggests brightly. "I mean, right after we find a hotel? I mean, I know we weren't planning to look for one-"

"Oh?" Susan asks, refiling Dipper's coffee mug. "Why not? Weren't you going to stay in town?"

"Well, we were," Mabel shares a look with Dipper, "but we were thinking of camping out at the Shack before we knew that it wasn't abandoned."

A stern look flits across Susan's face. "Why would you even consider sleeping there? How did you hear of the place?"

"Well," Mabel takes a deep breath, and launches into the tale of how they only recently found out that they had great uncles who they never even heard of before, and how the Shack'd been left to them, although technically it hadn't been left to them specifically, but rather to the remaining Pines family-

"Oh!" Susan's smile is back. "Why, you should've said you two were Pines'."

"Does it really make a difference?"

"Of course. Stanford Pines was a good man. Him and his brother. Although," she adds to herself, lost in thought, "I _still_ get them mixed up."

Susan's called away by the cook, but as she leaves, both twins hear her mutter, "Which one was the gargoyle, again?"

…

There isn't a single gargoyle in sight when the twins get to the Mystery Shack.

Or, the Mystery Hack, if the sign on the roof is to be trusted.

(Mabel spots the 'S' lying in the grass around the back of the Shack, and something with a red pointy hat darts away from the letter and into the woods before she can get a closer look at it.)

"Oh, hey dudes. Sorry, but the Shack's closed," the man on the porch says as he locks the door behind him, before getting a closer look at Dipper, squinting through the darkness. "What the- Mister Pines!"

Before Dipper can react, he's grabbed by his shoulders and shaken by a hysterical gopher-human hybrid.

"Mister Pines!" the man wails. "What did they do to you?! You've shrunk! You're young again!"

Dipper panics, and when he panics, Mabel panics too.

And so, it's not really a surprise when the attack glitter comes out.

…

Dipper hacks up another lungful of glitter - being caught in the crossfire of attack glitter is never fun - even as Mabel apologises to Soos. "Ohmigosh, I'm so sorry!"

"Eh," Soos wipes at watering eyes, dislodging little flakes of glitter from his face, "don't worry about it, dawg. I woulda done the same, come to think of it."

They're sitting on the porch of the Shack, exchanging apologies and explanations after it becomes apparent that the rotund man doesn't mean any harm.

"So, you two are twins, hey?" Soos ruffles his hair, and a tiny shower of glitter accompanies the movement.

"I'm Dipper Pines," Dipper introduces himself.

"And I'm Mabel!" Mabel enthusiastically shakes Soos' hand.

"Soos Ramirez at your service," Soos grins, then looks at Dipper again. "Sorry, dude. You really do look like Mr Pines."

"You knew our great-uncle?"

"Yeah! I work for him," Soos replies, and Dipper hides a frown when he hears Soos refer to his great-uncle in the present tense.

"Er," Dipper tries to think of a delicate way of saying it, and settles with, "how long has it been since you took over the Mystery Shack?"

Soos pauses, thinking, then counts off the years on his fingers. "One, two, three, four- Five! It's been five years. Woah," his eyes widen, "that's a long time."

"Our great-uncles have been dead for _five_ years?!" Dipper blurts out, unable to help himself even as he hears the shocked gasp from Mabel.

(" _Dipper_ ," she hisses, "you can't just say that!")

"Dead?" Soos repeats, a little incredulously. "Wha- Oh. Right, dead," he laughs nervously. "Yep, they're totally dead. Deader than a dodo. I'm totally not lying to you."

Dipper raises an eyebrow.

Soos babbles on. "At all. This is not a lie."

Dipper can't help but think Soos is lying.

…

It's clear that the twins won't take over the Shack - will or no will, Dipper and Mabel are not going to kick Soos out from the Shack.

("Aw, thanks, dudes.")

Soos is kind enough to drive the twins back to the hotel before returning to his abuelita's house. Apparently, Soos never spends the night at the Shack.

"It doesn't feel, right, you know?" Soos admits on the pick-up truck drive back. "I mean, the Shack isn't really mine."

Regardless, Soos offers to show the twins around in the morning. "It's a great place! You'll love it - well, I love it, anyway."

Dipper, unsurprisingly, is the one who jumps at the opportunity. He still has a mystery to solve, after all. Mabel rolls her eyes, knowing exactly why her brother wants to go visit the creepy wooden building, but she doesn't say anything to disagree.

After all, the whole reason they're in Gravity Falls is the Mystery Shack. Might as well see the place before they go back.

…

"Mabel," Dipper asks his sister, without taking his eyes off the newest addition to the Shack, "is… is it wearing _boxers_?"

The newest addition in question is a large, human-sized stone statue perched on the roof of the Shack, hunched over and pulling a face in the direction of the woods. The large, menacing wings and horns leave no doubt in Dipper's mind that it's the gargoyle - something he's sure wasn't there the night before.

Maybe.

(Then again, it was pretty dark last night, so Dipper isn't _that_ sure.)

Mabel tilts her head and squints through the bright sunlight, studying the gargoyle. "And a wifebeater. And a fez."

"...why?" Dipper throws his hands up in frustration. It doesn't make sense. "Why is it wearing that?"

"Simple," Mabel shakes her head at her brother. "It's _modern_ _art_ , bro."

Dipper groans, "Don't get started on the modern art again, Mabel."

Mabel giggles as she tugs Dipper towards the front door of the Shack. "Come on, Soos' probably waiting for us."

As it turns out, Soos is quite capable of spinning a tale and capturing the attention of a group of gullible tourists. Dipper and Mabel can see that the exhibits are fake, and they see right through Soos' attempts at squeezing the suckers dry.

It's amazing how much people will pay just to look at some fake exhibits.

(At one point, Mabel's pretty sure the so-called Tri-Goaticorn is just a goat with an extra horn strapped to its head with fur dyed a hot pink. She squees over it anyway.)

"And behold," Soos finishes the tour with a single feather set up behind a glass case, "a genuine Sphinx feather!"

The tourists' reactions are less than impressed.

"It's a fake," someone mutters from the safety found in the anonymity of a crowd.

Soos gasps. "It is _not_! You take that back!"

When the culprit doesn't identify himself, Soos falls back into the Mr Mystery persona, and directs the tourists toward the gift shop, telling the group to purchase the overpriced knick-knacks.

"So, what do you think?" Soos asks, a little nervously as he makes his way to the twins.

 _It's ridiculous_ , Dipper stops himself from saying, and scrambles for something nice to say.

"It's _amazing_!" Mabel squeals, looking at the glitter-covered half-monkey half-fish display.

Dipper sighs in relief. "Y-yeah, it's great!"

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the weather. Throughout the day, dark, heavy clouds, gather overhead, and by midday, a strong gale whips up, sending leaves, twigs and dirt scattering in all directions.

The twins, who'd only planned to stay there for half of the day, find themselves trapped for the whole day. The storm starts, and rain pours down by the buckets. Tourists stop showing up to the Shack after that, since the old building's sitting on a dusty - now very muddy and treacherous - road.

Incidentally, the three humans in the Shack can't leave either.

Mabel looks on the bright side of things when night falls and the storm is still raging. "It'll be just like a sleepover!"

While Soos takes up the idea happily, Dipper isn't quite so eager. In the day, the Shack's a decrepit but definitely-not-scary building in the woods. At night…

Well, there's the weird sounds, the low growls, coming from the floorboards, along with some muffled scratching.

"It's just the raccoons," Soos shrugs, then continues to help Mabel drag dusty blankets from a closet to the living room.

Dipper pokes his head into the closet, eyes widening when he catches sight of the object. "Aaaaaah!" he squeals, sounding remarkably like his female twin.

"Dipper?!" Mabel runs up the stairs in alarm, only to trip and face-plant at the top. She pries herself off the floorboards without batting an eye, rushing to her twin's side. "What is it?"

Dipper whirls around, clutching a flat box in his hands. "It's Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons! It's the controversial 1991-1992 version!"

"Ugh! Not that nerd game!"

…

Soos, fortunately, has managed to get the old tv in the living room to work, so that they don't have to spend the night playing the nerd board game.

Unfortunately, the power goes out half an hour into the cheesy movie - 'The Lady Endorses' or something ridiculous like that - and the three of them are left, blinking in the sudden darkness.

"You guys have a flashlight?" Soos asks out of the darkness, only to be answered by Mabel's phone screen lighting up.

"Nope," she says. "Got my trusty phone instead."

There isn't much to do after that - the power's gone, and no one (except maybe Dipper) wants to play a board game, so the three retire for the night.

Dipper ignores the howling wind, the growls from the plumbing and the occasional scratches from the raccoons.

Surprisingly, they're all asleep in moments.

…

Dipper is not in the habit of waking up in the middle of the night.

Dipper is, however, in the habit of waking up in the middle of the night to comfort his sibling if she ever has a nightmare.

Or an urge to suddenly explore the Shack and its weird noises.

"Dipper, this one was different," Mabel insists in a whisper as they creep pass the snoring Soos and into the hallway. "It wasn't the plumbing's growls. It was the plumbing itself."

Dipper, who's still half asleep, forms out a very articulate "Whuh-?" before shaking his head. "What do you mean," he asks, more awake.

"Listen," Mabel presses her ear against the wall. "There's water rushing through the pipes."

Dipper follows suite, and listens. "Are you sure? I mean, it could be just the rain-"

"No, it's definitely the pipes," Mabel insists. "I would know."

"And how would you…?"

"We do not talk about the pipes," Mabel shakes a finger at Dipper. "Ever. Like the Lamby Lamby-"

"Okay, okay," Dipper quickly retracts his questions. "You've made your point."

The twins follow the gurgling sound of the pipes up the stairs and to the bathroom. It's there that they hear the sound clearly - the unmistakable sound of running water from the showerhead and a odd rhythmic growl that might be passed off as humming.

"You don't think that-?" Dipper looks at Mabel in panic.

"There's an intruder!" Mabel finishes in a frightened whisper.

They arm themselves - Mabel with her pillow and Dipper with a nearby stool.

"On three," Dipper whispers.

Mabel nods. Then, she shrieks out, "Three!" before throwing the door open.

There's something with grey, stone-like skin sitting in the bathtub, and the showerhead's sending a fine stream of water cascading down its back, where the creature is scrubbing away with a shower brush between his wings. He starts to turn at the noise. "Ford, for the last time, quit bargin' in here. I get to use this bathroom every other night, and I don't care how matted your fur gets-"

He stops, eyes wide at the sight of the two teens at the doorway.

Then they all scream.

(Meanwhile, deep in the basement, a pair of lion-like ears twitch towards the sound, before the owner of the ears sighs in exasperation. "Oh, for goodness sake, Stanley.")

Dipper and Mabel are screaming because it's the _fricking gargoyle from the roof_ , and the gargoyle is screaming because who wouldn't scream if they are caught in the shower by two strangers?

The gargoyle pauses in his screaming long enough to snag a nearby towel and cover himself. "Holy fu-" he stops. "Wait a minute, how old are you kids?"

"Seventeen," Mabel answers, still in shock.

"Technically almost an adult," Dipper adds automatically.

"Still a kid, then," the gargoyle muses, then switches the expletive for something more kid-friendly. "Hot Belgian Waffles! Don't you know how to knock?!"

That snaps the twins out of their daze.

"Die, Weeping Angel!" Mabel's war-cry is accompanied by a wallop to the creature's head with her pillow.

"Geez-" the gargoyle grunts when the pillow connects with his face again. He catches the feathered pillow the next time Mabel swings, rips it from her grasp and tosses it through the still open door. "Will ya stop that?"

Mabel squeaks in fear and ducks behind Dipper, who holds up the chair in the same manner one might if one happens to be facing off a circus lion. "Get back!" Then, his curiosity gets the better of him. "How are you moving? You were stone! You're a gargoyle."

"Yep," the gargoyle rolls his eyes, grasps the stool and tosses it after the pillow before shoving the twins out the door and locking it behind them. "And I'm also taking a shower."

Fifteen minutes later, when the gargoyle finishes with his shower, he steps outside to find the twins still gaping at him. "What? I got something on my face?"

They continue to stare.

The gargoyle, seeing no changes in their facial expressions except for a sporadic twitch in the boy's left eyelid, sighs. "Follow me."

And when the gargoyle slowly shuffles down the stairs, spiked tail swinging from side to side as he walks, the twins follow hesitantly.

Soos, who's been woken up by all the screaming, is waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

"Hey, Soos," the gargoyle grunts as they pass by.

"Hey, Mister Pines."

Dipper and Mabel stop, look at Soos and then at the gargoyle's retreating back. "Wait - _what_?!"


	2. Chapter 2

_**AN: So, as most of you have realised by now, yes, this is an AU of an AU - specifically, the monster!Falls AU. In this case, there's a long (and somewhat convoluted) backstory on how the Stans ended up where they are.**_

 _ **Long story short, Weirdmageddon happened, the younger twins missed it, the Stan Twins had to deal with it, and they didn't completely mess it up - they saved the world, but ended up monsters.**_

 _ **(And yes, they bickered the whole time as well.)**_

 _ **(Also, Bill isn't dead - just sealed away - but I don't see him fitting into this story any time soon.)**_

 _ **Fast forward five years, Stanley's (who was posing as Stanford during Ford's portal time) will finally makes it past the clutches of GF bureaucracy and to the proper authorities.**_

 ** _Cue Dipper and Mabel - and that's where_ **Technicalities _ **picks up.**_

* * *

Having hot chocolate in the middle of the night, while not a common occurrence, isn't something Dipper hasn't experienced before. His sister is _Mabel_ , after all.

Having hot chocolate in the middle of the night with a gargoyle who also happens to be their great-uncle is something else all together.

"Wow," Stan whistles as he peers at the picture of the will Mabel pulls up on her phone, "I didn't think they'd actually find it."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I wrote the will decades ago," Stan explains, scratching his scaly chin with a claw, "and so much has happened since then. I didn't think they'd actually go ahead and declare us dead."

"But you're not dead!" Mabel points out at the same time Dipper picks up on what Stan said.

"Wait, _us_?"

"Yeah, but you can't expect me to go waltzing down the street in broad daylight-" the gargoyle stops. "Well, technically I can't, since sunlight turns me to stone, but that's not the point here. I can't go walking around without scaring everybody off, you know what I'm sayin'?"

Mabel pats his arm in consolidation. "Sorry about hitting you with a pillow."

Stan shrugs off the apology. "I've had worse. Just ask Ford-" he pauses. "Actually, don't bother him. We… we haven't been talking much. Dunno how he might receive you two."

They don't mention Stan's brother after that. Mabel, thankfully, fills what would've been an awkward silence with her bubbly personality, and peppers Stan with endless questions, ranging from-

"Can moss grow on you?"

("Yep. If I stay still long enough.")

\- to -

"Can I bedazzle your face?"

("Heck no, kid!")

And despite the gargoyle's grumpiness, Dipper can see Stan's growing fond of Mabel, especially when she offers to set up an umbrella on the rooftop to protect him from sunburn. When Dipper's eyes can't stay open any longer, he nods off at the table, to the sound of Mabel telling Stan anecdotes from their childhood.

He's mostly asleep when clawed hands gently pick him up and move him back into the living room.

…

When Dipper wakes the next morning, it's to the sight of Mabel's face uncomfortably close to his, and a wide, slightly manic grin stretched across her face.

(In other words, it's the usual.)

"Morning, Dipping Sauce!"

"Hey Mabel," Dipper yawns, then rolls over and pulls the covers over his head.

"Guess who's got a daaaate!" Mabel sings brightly and completely off-tune.

It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in.

"What?!" Dipper jack-knifes into a sitting position, rubbing at his eyes. "You mean to say you've managed to find a boyfriend already?"

"Yep."

"But we've been here for _barely more than a day_!"

"What can I say," Mabel flops her sweater sleeves up and down, like a deranged seal, "I'm irresistable!"

It's then that Dipper gets a Bad Feeling About This.

Dipper's Bad Feelings are usually right - okay, maybe not usually - but they're usually right when it comes to Mabel's well-being. The Bad Feeling intensifies when Mabel introduces him to Norman, and it worsens after he discretely spies on the two love-birds.

It hits the absolute worst of the worst when he stumbles across a leather-bound journal with foil in the shape of a six-fingered hand pasted to its cover. The journal's been left on the kitchen counter, almost deliberately. The horrible feeling settles in his gut when he flips through the book, only to see a page on zombies.

(He frowns at the bookmarked page on gnomes, but brushes it aside in favour of zombies.)

It's afternoon - and Mabel's gone on her five o'clock date - by the time he confesses to Soos. "I think my sister's dating a zombie."

To Soos' credit, he doesn't laugh. He doesn't mock Dipper, and even asks if the younger man has proof.

("I'm pretty sure the mailman's a werewolf," Soos whispers conspiratorially to Dipper, even though the Shack's empty. "And besides, your great-uncle's a gargoyle. I wouldn't put it past a zombie to date your sister.")

Proof comes in the form of his video camera - or more specifically, a video of Norman's hand dropping out of his hoodie's sleeve.

Dipper, understandably, freaks out.

…

"Gnomes?" Dipper blinks, squinting through the bright fairytale hues of the clearing and at the bearded little men. "Wow, I was way off."

Dipper, after borrowing a golf-cart and a shovel (and a bat) from Soos, spends the whole driving thinking he's prepared to fight off one zombie. Fighting off a horde of gnomes, on the other hand…

It all becomes a blur of adrenaline, screaming, punching, kicking and biting (well, the gnomes bite - the twins, not as much) after that, as the twins fight off the swarming gnomes. The twins have an advantage in their size - it takes very little to send a gnome spinning away, puking rainbows like some sort of stomach-turning shooting star trail - but the gnomes have an advantage in numbers.

When Mabel's brought to the ground under a pile of gnomes, Dipper follows soon after.

As Dipper reaches desperately towards his sister, with a shout of "Mabel!" on his lips and answering cry of "Dipper!" in response, his thoughts are on how humiliating it'd be to have

 _Not Even Eighteen_

 _Got His Ass Kicked By Gnomes_

as an epitaph.

His morbid thoughts are dislodged when a roar echoes into the clearing. Humans and gnomes alike freeze, and stare at the source of the sound. There's a winged-lion wearing glasses, a sweater and a pair of pants crouched at the mouth of the clearing next to the golf-cart, tail swishing in agitation.

"That's it," Dipper mutters to himself, wishing his arms aren't pinned down by about twenty gnomes so he can bury his face in his hands, "I'm sleep deprived. I'm starting to see things."

"Let the kids go, Jeff!" the sphinx growls.

("Looks like you're hearing things too, bro-bro."

"Gee, thanks, Mabel.")

"No way," the gnome called Jeff refuses adamantly, shaking his fist at the sphinx. "You keep your nose outta our business-"

The sphinx bats Jeff aside, almost boredly, with one paw.

"Oh, come on, _again_?!" Jeff shrieks as he flies across the clearing for the second time in a few minutes.

The rest of the gnomes freeze, unsure of what to do.

"Get them!" Jeff's voice yells from the safety of a tree stump, and satisfied at given an order, the rest of the gnomes descend on the sphinx.

And like a few minutes before, everything dissolves into a mess of punching, kicking, biting, etc., etc., etc. Except this time, there's also handfuls of yanked fur and feathers, and roars of anger and pain as well as swiping paws.

In the mess of it all, Dipper breaks free of the gnomes pinning him down, and helps Mabel fight off the few still attached to her person. Mabel returns the favour by beating off a gnome that'd attached itself to his face.

("Thanks, Mabel," Dipper's pretty sure he might have a concussion by now. Or at least a migraine by the next morning.)

"Dipper, what do we do? There's too many of them!" Mabel says in a panic as she's pulled to her feet by her brother.

"Run!" the Sphinx suddenly orders from behind them, having shaken off his own share of gnomes.

Before the twins can protest, the Sphinx picks up the two in his mouth by the back of their collars and takes off at a fast run through the forest, leaping agilely over the fallen trees and bounding around the occasional boulder.

They reach the dirt road again, and Mabel sighs in relief, seemingly unphased by the fact she's being carried like a kitten by a mythical creature. "They can't catch us now, right?"

Dipper glances warily up at the Sphinx, only to be treated to a dry look of, _No, of course I'm not going to eat you. That's disgusting._

Or, it could've been a look of, _Detroit is a horrible place. Never go_ there. *****

(Dipper's not too good at reading minds.)

"Well," Dipper ventures hopefully, "they do have tiny little legs. I don't see how-"

A tree snaps in the distance. It's followed by the sound of giant feet hitting the ground and even more trees snapping, like some sort of giant statue is tearing its way through the forest.

The Sphinx mumbles something around the fabric in his mouth. It sounds remarkably like, "Really? You had to say it, didn't you?"

Then, he starts running down the dirt road, at a faster pace than before.

"It's getting closer!" Mabel screeches, and Dipper's pretty sure the sphinx winces at the high pitch.

There's a sudden gust of wind right behind them, and the twins find themselves tumbling face-down into the dirt as the sphinx is abruptly swept away by what appears to be the hand of some sort of symbiotic giant made out of hundreds of gnomes.

(On any other day, Dipper might find it fascinating. Today, he's settling for terrified out of his mind.)

"Mabel!" Jeff yells at the top of the gnome-symbiotic-mass. "Marry us before we do something crazy!"

"What? No!" Dipper shouts back at the same time Mabel hisses at Dipper, "I've got to do it."

"Mabel, you can't!"

"Trust me, Dipper," Mabel implores, eyes earnest.

And then, the Bad Feeling in Dipper lessens its hold a little. Dipper bites his lip, looking between Mabel and Jeff, and nods reluctantly.

"I'll marry you," Mabel announces to Jeff.

Jeff is, unsurprisingly, overjoyed and pleasantly surprised. "You will?"

"I mean," he continues as he makes his way down the abomination-against-nature stack of gnomes, "the last time we tried to find a new gnome queen, she ran away screaming before we could make an offer, and by the time we caught her, she fought us off with a BB gun-"

Jeff's tale of the gnomes' failed past romances is cut short by Mabel snatching up the gnome and jamming a pinecone into his mouth as a makeshift gag. She holds him up threateningly.

"Back off," she warns the rest of the gnomes, "or else your boss gets it!"

The other gnomes freeze, and remain frozen when the sphinx stumbles back onto the dirt road, glasses askew. He sneezes, dispersing pollen everywhere and dislodges a strange red flower from his mane before collapsing to the ground in a boneless heap.

"Is..." Dipper looks at the sphinx carefully. "Is he...?"

The Sphinx, pink tongue poking past his half-open mouth, snores.

"He's sleeping," Mabel smiles, then her expression hardens as she regards Jeff - who's squirming in her hands. "Dipper? How's your throwing arm?"

Dipper catches onto Mabel's plan and grins wickedly. "I've been working on it."

…

The gnomes are gone - once Jeff's been flung across the treetops and to who-knows-where, the rest of the gnomes are quite useless. Without orders, they're about as useful as lawn ornaments. All it takes is a few threats (and some gratuitous swinging of branches) and the rest are sent scrambling back into the forest.

The real problem, truthfully, is what to do with the Sphinx.

He's covered in several bite marks as well as several scratches, and neither Mabel nor Dipper can leave him out here in good conscience, especially when the Sphinx doesn't show any signs of waking up. Possibly-Deadly-Mythical creature or not, he _did_ save Mabel from a life of holy matri-gnomey.

"We should take him back to the Shack," Mabel declares.

"But what if he's dangerous-"

The Sphinx continues to snore.

"Dipper, look," Mabel lifts up one of the sleeping Sphinx's paws and waves it at Dipper, "look at these toe beans! He's just a giant kitty with wings."

Dipper narrows his eyes. "...does he have six toes?"

"He _does_ six toes!" Mabel squeals upon a closer inspection of the paw. "That's a whole toe-bean cuter than normal!"

Dipper sighs. There's no stopping Mabel now. "Fine, we'll get him back..."

Between them, the Sphinx sleeps on peacefully, tail twitching a little every now and then.

Then,

" _How_ are we supposed to get him back?"

* * *

 _ **Or, it could've been a look of,**_ Detroit is a horrible place. Never go there _ **. * - idea taken from Airplane! (or AKA Flying High). "It's worse than Detroit."**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**AN: I like cats. (And dogs. They're both great.)**_

* * *

Picking up a sleeping cat is already a difficult job - especially since Mister Buttons, the Pines Family cat back in Piedmont, wakes up at the lightest touch and makes the whole point of 'sleeping' void - but picking up a sleeping Sphinx is much harder.

The Sphinx, the twins find, is rather like a large ragdoll cat.

They try to lift the creature up by his middle - and his head and legs flop to the dirt.

Lifting up the Sphinx by his hind legs accomplishes little more than dragging the Sphinx's head along the ground.

Lifting the Sphinx by his fore legs ends up with his hind legs trailing in the dirt.

Lifting the Sphinx by both his front and hind legs results in the creature's middle sagging - yet again - into the ground.

"Let's just go with this one," Dipper, struggling under the weight of the Sphinx's heavy front paws, decides at last.

Mabel, at the hind legs of the Sphinx, nods in agreement. It's certainly the least damaging method of carrying the oversized-kitty.

They stagger on towards the Shack, the odd red flower left behind in the dust.

When they get to the Shack and are about to enter through the gift-shop door, they're stopped in their tracks by the sight of Soos and a tour group.

The group stares at the twins and the creature they are carrying between them.

"Don't mind us!" Mabel releases one of the Sphinx's legs to wave at the group. "We're just… uh, making a two-person horse costume!"

"Y-yeah!" Dipper adds on, then quickly thinks back to a holiday he heard Soos mention a while ago. "It's for… Summerween...?"

In spite of the fact that the 'costume' held between the twins is anything _but_ a horse, and looks more like a giant cat with colourful wings, and that the twins might be a little too old for Summerween, the tourists believe them.

(They're dense enough to fall for a poorly taxidermied monkey-fish hybrid, so Dipper _would_ be surprised if they didn't believe them.)

With that, the twins skirt around the group, and into the almost empty gift shop - there's a red-headed woman sitting at the counter, flipping idly through a magazine.

The twins freeze, and Mabel's about to offer the horse-costume-excuse again when the red-head grins.

"You must be Dipper and Mabel, right? Soos told me you were gonna be-" she stops, squinting at the Sphinx. "...what happened to him?"

"Gnomes!" Mabel answers cheerily, then adds, "I'm Mabel!"

The red-head laughs good-naturedly, "Well, I didn't think your brother would be called Mabel. The name's Wendy."

Mabel sets her portion of the Sphinx to the ground - Dipper nearly falls over under the sudden increase in weight - and reaches forward to shake Wendy's offered hand. She jabs a thumb over her shoulder at Dipper. "And that's my brother Dipper."

Dipper manages to wave with one hand - and nearly loses his grip on the Sphinx. "Mabel-" Dipper yelps, staggering as he tries to stop the creature's head from hitting the floorboards.

"Oh! Sorry, Dipping Sauce," Mabel runs back to the Sphinx and lifts up the hind legs again.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, Wendy," Dipper offers a slightly strained smile - it's strained because the Sphinx is _bloody_ heavy and they've been carrying him through the forest and Dipper's trying to not collapse - at the cashier.

"You guys need any help with that?" Wendy, without waiting for an answer, walks up from around the counter and takes the Sphinx off their hands easily.

"T-thanks," Dipper's smile is no less genuine, but it's a lot less strained.

"No problem," Wendy winks at Dipper, and the almost-an-adult blushes.

It takes Wendy a little while to get a good hold on the Sphinx, and she ends up carrying him bridal style.

Normally, this is an acceptable method of carrying someone, but thanks to the Sphinx's ragdoll cat characteristics, he's still flopping over in a manner that can't be good for his back. On Wendy's left, Mabel holds the Sphinx's trailing tail off the ground while on Wendy's right, Dipper tries to lift the head of the Sphinx into a less uncomfortable position.

In this awkward three-person-carry, they move past the gift shop and into a corridor.

"Where should we put him?" Mabel asks, still a little winded from lugging the Sphinx through the forest.

"Maybe in the attic?" Dipper suggests, then shoots down the idea even as Mabel groans.

"We can't carry him up the stairs!"

"Good point, sis, good point," Dipper looks around the corridor. "How about the living room?"

"Nah," Wendy shakes her head. "Anyone can stumble in there. We should take him to-"

"Dudes?" Soos, having just finished off the tour, joins the three humans. "What happened to him?"

The twins take turns answering while Wendy tries to not laugh at their explanation.

"He fought the gnomes."

"He carried us through the forest."

"Then he was whacked into some flowers."

"And we had to carry him back."

"And he's been sleeping the whole time."

Soos is considerably less amused than Wendy. "Aw man," he wrings his hands. "Mister Pines isn't going to be happy."

"What? Why?"

"This dude's Doctor Mister Pines."

…

Soos is surprisingly strong - almost as strong as Wendy - and apparently more adept at picking up sleeping cats.

Or, it might be just because he's taller than everyone else that has attempted to pick up the Sphinx.

The Sphinx (or Doctor Mister Pines, as Soos calls him) is slung over the man-child's shoulder and carried - still limp, floppy and snoring away - over to a room with an intricately carved door.

Soos gives the blue shag carpet on the ground a wide berth and sets the Sphinx down on the couch. "Don't touch that carpet, dawgs. It's… _creepy_."

Soos has a weird definition for many things - and most of the time, they're overstatements. However, the twins decide that it's better to listen to Soos when it comes to _creepy_ things; more often than not, he's right.

Soos and Wendy can't help out much - since they still have the Mystery Shack to run - so it's up to the twins to disinfect the Sphinx's bite wounds and scratches and bandage up the worst of the damage. Dipper can't help but wince when he notices the odd bent and broken feather from the Sphinx's wings.

"Dipper, look," Mabel, who's been steadily plucking twigs and leaves out of the Sphinx's mane, suddenly shoves a red flower at him. "Isn't it pretty?"

Dipper sneezes on the pollen. "Mabel! You know I have hayfever-" he stops, suddenly woozy.

...

"-ipper?" Mabel's bending over him and…

When did he get onto his back?

"Dipper! Are you okay?" Mabel peers at him in worry.

Dipper sits up with a groan. "What happened?"

"You sneezed. And nodded off."

"I fell asleep?" Dipper asks incredulously. "But I felt fine-" His eyes fall to the flower, discarded to the floor in a panic by Mabel thanks to her collapsing twin. "Wait a second."

Dipper prods the flower tentatively with a finger, and when it doesn't leap up to attach itself to his face or attack him at all, pulls his hand back. "The Sphinx was covered in these, wasn't he?"

Mabel gasps dramatically. "You think it's because he was covered in the pollen?"

"It might be," Dipper mutters, then clicks his fingers. "There might be something about it in the journal!"

Mabel nods along, then asks, frowning, "What journal?"

"Oh, I haven't shown you yet, have I?"

…

There is, indeed, something about the flower in the journal.

More specifically, there's a whole page dedicated to the flower, and about how its pollen should be avoided at all costs, since prolonged contact will cause the victim in question to fall into a deep, unnatural sleep.

(There's also an absentmindedly-scribbled note on whether or not the Rip Van Winkle tale might have been inspired by the effects of the pollen.)

"He's going to sleep forever?!" Mabel wails in dismay, only for Dipper to shush her gently.

"What? No, of course not," Dipper points at a line in the journal. "See? The pollen's effects can be reversed by a True Love's Kiss."

Mabel squeals in delight. "Matchmaking Mabel is here to save the day-"

" _Not_ that kind of True Love's Kiss," Dipper says hastily, scanning down the journal. "It's a type of flower, apparently."

"Who even names flowers like that?" Mabel demands with a huff.

"Whoever the author of this journal is, I guess," Dipper shrugs.

"Are you sure we can trust this author?"

"Well, there was that entry on the gnomes..."

Mabel, still sour at being denied her chance of match-making, sighs. "Oh, fine. So, how do we get this True Love's Kiss?"

"Let me see," Dipper reads aloud from the journal, "'The True Love's Kiss flower blooms only at night, but other than that, it is easily accessible'," Dipper flips the page, his hopes growing, only to be dashed to pieces by the next page, "...'if one is capable of flight.' _Who writes sentences like that?!_ "

Mabel looks crestfallen. "We can't fly."

"No," Dipper agrees sadly. "We can't."

Falling with style is the most the twins can do, in terms of aerial stunts.

Then, Mabel perks up. "But we know someone who can!"

...

When the sun sets, Stan usually takes joy in cracking off the layer of stone in one sharp movement and stretch out his talons menacingly at an invisible audience while letting out a terrifying roar (or a belch. It depends on what he's eaten for dinner - or, technically, a very early breakfast - the night before).

Stan likes being dramatic (and there may or may not be a photo of him in a devil's costume to prove it).

Tonight, Stan has no chance for such dramatics.

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel screeches in his face before he has a chance to send stone fragments flying. Instead, the pieces slide off him rather anticlimactically. "Grunkle Stan, we need your help!"

Stan looks at Mabel, who's standing right before him, then at Dipper for an explanation, who's peering warily from the safety of the ladder leading up to the roof. Then, he notices that both are a little scruffier than before, and there's bandaids and bandages covering various parts of their bodies.

They _look_ fine, and since neither of the two are offering an explanation or collapsing from their injuries, Stan decides to let sleeping dogs lie.

"Uh… sure, sweetie," Stan shrugs at last. _Why not_? he figures, _it's not like I've got anything else to do_. "Whaddya need help with?"

Then, he frowns. "And what the he- _heck's_ a Grunkle?"

…

"Damnit, Stanford," Stan facepalms when the twins show him the sleeping Sphinx. "What did you do to yourself, Poindexter?"

"He fought a gnome," Mabel supplies. "Well, a giant amalgamation of gnomes. He was very brave."

"He's a reckless idiot," Stan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Common sense means nothin' to him- wait, did you say gnomes?"

"They tried to make Mabel marry them," Dipper replies. "So, he rescued us from-"

"Those little bas-" Stan quickly replaces his previous word, " _basket_ cases! I was gonna say basket cases!"

The twins give each other a look. _Yeah, sure._

"Why," Stan grumbles, as he realises what the various bandaids and bandages on the younger twins are covering, "I oughta hunt down those little twerps and beat the stuffing outta them-"

"Stan," Dipper brings the Gargoyle back to the matter at hand. "So, about the True Love's Kiss?"

Stan pulls a face as he looks at Ford. "Look, kid, I love my brother, and I'm pretty certain he doesn't completely hate me, but if he wakes up to see me so close to him, he's gonna punch me in the face. I'd like to keep my nose in one piece and I ain't gonna kiss him-"

Dipper rolls his eyes. "It's a flower."

"Oh," Stan sighs in relief. "That's good. So, where do we find this flower?"

"It's easy," Dipper holds up a map, "we just gotta go past the unicorn glade, under the overpass and over the underpass…"*

…

"Ya couldn't have mentioned it was _at the top of an impossibly steep cliff_?" Stan huffs in annoyance as the three stand at the base of the cliff, illuminated by the flashlight Dipper holds. The moonlight alone is enough to render the almost non-existent handholds on the cliff visible.

"Well, actually," Mabel points out after a moment as she directs her flashlight to half-way up the cliff, where some glowing green flowers are growing right out of a rock,"it's not at the top of the cliff."

 _Yay for us_ , Stan thinks sarcastically. Out loud, he anounces, "There's no way we're climbin' up that." It takes him five seconds to simply _look_ from the bottom of the cliff to the flowers. He doesn't want to consider climbing it at all.

"No, we can't," Dipper agrees. "Which is why we need you to fly up there."

"F-fly?" Stan stammers. "Fly up there?"

"Yeah!" Mabel grins brightly. "You can fly, right? I mean, those wings aren't just useless gliding wings, right?" _ *****_

"Of course not," Stan sounds annoyed, as if he's insulted at the thought of having useless wings. "I can totally fly. I can fly very… high… up," he becomes more hesitant as he reaches the end of his sentence. "Heh," he laughs nervously. "This cliff's real tall, isn't it?"

"Grunkle Stan," Mabel looks at Stan knowingly, "are you afraid of heights?"

"What? Of course not! That'd be stupid, since I have wings and it'd be weird if I have never flown, not even once, in my life..." Stan sighs. "Yeah. I'm terrified."

Mabel's smile, Dipper and Stan decide, is more terrifying. It's her _I've-got-a-great-idea_ smile.

"This," Mabel declares dramatically, "calls for the blindfold!"

"Oh, no."

Dipper is certain this isn't going to end well.

…

"We got it!" Mabel crows in triumph, hands clutching at a bunch of lime-green flowers. She nearly teeters right off Stan's back before the Gargoyle hastily tightens his grasp on Mabel's legs as she sits on his shoulders, piggy-back style.

Both Stan and Mabel look a little worse for wear - they both have twigs sticking out of their hair and both are bruised and grazed from smacking repeatedly into the cliff-face thanks to Mabel's poor directions.

("Go left!"

"Ow!"

"Your _other_ left!")

Stan gingerly peels off the blindfold when they're both safely on the ground and kisses the grass at his feet. "Oh, sweet, solid ground! I am never leaving you again!"

Mabel is less traumatised from her adventure. "Dipper, we did it!"

Dipper, who has wisely chosen to remain behind (mainly because he's certain Stan can't carry both twins on his back without throwing it out), smiles at his sister's enthusiasm.

…

Ford's certain he's been drooling. There's a damp patch on the couch where his muzzle is, and it's slightly embarrassing, especially when his younger twin is looking at him in glee.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Sleeping Beauty," Stan has his best sh_t-eating grin on his face. "How was the nap, Sixer?"

Ford fights the urge to punch Stan, mainly because he looks too happy while he's suffering from a blasted migraine. Then, he notices he's been bandaged in several places ( _probably gnome bites_ , Ford scowls), and several of the bandages have bright, sparkly stickers adorning them. The nearest one is a glittery, smiling star with the words, "You're a Star" emblazoned across it. Then, he notices the green flower Stan's setting aside.

It all comes back to him in a rush. The gnomes. The red flowers. "The kids-!"

"Are fine," Stan finishes with a small eye roll. "You wanna meet them officially?"

"I suppose it can't be any worse than meeting them with the gnomes," Ford mutters, and the two teens enter the room at Stan's bellow of, "Kids!"

Mabel is weird, Ford decides. She's a silly, but bright and bubbly swirl of energy that reminds him of… of Stan. The sudden reminder of his childhood is not one he wants to consider.

(He does, however, decide he likes her when she coos over his 'toe beans' with no traces of fear in her eyes, nor any disgust at his extra digits. Ford also makes a note to find out what 'toe beans' are.)

Dipper is so much like himself it's almost painful to see the younger twins together.

(He does, however, push aside the old melancholic memories when Dipper shyly pulls out the DD&D board and asks if the Sphinx wouldn't mind playing the board game with him.)

In the end, though, he's thankful for his great-niece-and-nephew. It makes recovery from his tussle with the gnomes much more pleasant.

(No one notices when Stan smiles sadly before sneaking out the room to the roof in time for dawn.)

* * *

BONUS SCENE:

"You thought the gnomes were zombies?"

"It seemed right at the time!"

"But I even _bookmarked_ the gnome page for you! I thought you would have realised from my writings-"

"Wait! You're the author of the journal?!"

"Well, yes-"

"Aaaaaaaah!"

* * *

" _ **Yeah!" Mabel grins brightly. "You can fly, right? I mean, those wings aren't just useless gliding wings, right?"*  
**_ _ ***See Disney's Gargoyles. Awesome show. Pity they can only glide - not that it makes the show any less awesome.**_

" _ **It's easy," Dipper holds up a map, "we just gotta go past the unicorn glade, under the overpass and over the underpass..."*  
**_ _ ***Under the overpass and over the underpass - line taken from Get Smart, not the modern movie but from the old tv series. I'm a sucker for the classics.**_


	4. Chapter 4

04

It isn't until a week after the gnome incident that it finally occurs to Ford to ask Dipper, "How did you manage to get the True Love's Kiss flower? Don't tell me you and Mabel climbed up."

The two are seated at the kitchen table, both nursing cups of coffee. It's mid-morning, and the two of them look particularly sleep-deprived. Ford's sleep deprived because- well, he's _Ford_ , but the Sphinx isn't sure why Dipper is so tired.

"Well, actually," Dipper looks up from his coffee mug, "Stan flew up for us."

"Stanley flew?" Ford sounds amazed. He's pretty certain Stan would never leave the ground under his own power. After all, the gargoyle can barely get onto the roof without flinching. _Although, given the many times Stan has climbed onto the roof, perhaps he's developed a sort of immunity from his fear-_

"He was blindfolded. And Mabel was giving directions."

 _Oh._ Ford winces. "...and they _survived_?"

Dipper snorts. "I know, right? I was half convinced they were either going to brain themselves against the cliff, or drop out of the sky altogether."

Ford sighs, and rubs a paw over his face. "If I didn't know any better, I'd accuse them of making me worry on purpose."

"That's Mabel for you," Dipper says wisely, sipping from his coffee cup. "Always leaping before she looks."

Ford nearly says it's the same for Stan as well, but he can't claim to know his twin as well as he once did. Forty years, after all, is a long time, and five years of awkward silence (technically, it's more like _we live in the same house and neither of us can leave because we're both monsters so we should tolerate each other and try not to kill each other because even though I'm mad at you I still love you_ ) doesn't help much.

(Incidentally, most of Stan and Ford's problems can be solved by talking, but that's not something the Pines men - and more often than one thinks, the women too - are good at.)

So, really, it doesn't come as a surprise that it takes the arrival of their niblings for the elder set of Pine Twins to talk more than just mundane things like, "Pass the salt."

(Neither of them ever says "Please" or "Thank you" to the other.)

Now, they've progressed to, "Get your nerdy ass up here for dinner because we ain't starting without ya!"

("And we're hungry!" Mabel usually joins in the hullabaloo. Sometimes, Dipper does too.)

Ford, the recipient of such words, finds himself dragged out of the basement every night to have dinner with the other three Pines, and for the most part, he doesn't mind.

Sure, there's still the occasional stiff silence between Stan and himself, but that's usually filled by Mabel and her unusual repertoire, like, "Blaargh!"

Whatever it's supposed to mean, it usually does the trick.

Ford frowns. " _Where_ is Mabel, by the way?"

"Hanging out with her new friends," Dipper replies easily, and drains his coffee cup. "Candy and Grenda, I think? They're going to see a band or something."

"I'm back!" Mabel bounds into the kitchen in a small cloud of glitter, startling the two males into jumping and nearly upsetting their coffee mugs.

Ford, being on the verge of swallowing a mouthful of coffee, is reduced to choking on it in surprise. Dipper quickly slides off his chair, runs around the table and thumps Ford on the back. Mabel, who's digging through the fridge for something, is completely oblivious to the chaos behind her. By the time she re-emerges with her target, Ford's breathing normally again.

She slams the glass jar on the table (Ford flinches again) and slaps a glass cup next to it. "Who's up for Mabel Juice?"

"No thanks," Dipper suddenly looks a little queasy. "Not after last time."

Ford is a scientist - that means he asks questions, invents things, and occasionally blows things up. Most of the time, he enjoys being a scientist. Then, there's times like this that he wishes he wasn't one.

The pink substance with floating bits of plastic dinosaurs appears to be some abomination against nature, but Ford is bound by science to determine its properties.

"What is this… Mabel Juice?" Ford sniffs the air around the jug cautiously, then recoils. He's sure he can smell the sugar molecules emanating from the concoction. And if he looks hard enough, he might even _see_ the sugar molecules.

"It's got enough sugar to make the entire population of Gravity Falls diabetic," Dipper mutters under his breath, only loud enough for Ford to hear.

Ford, understandably, is quite alarmed when Mabel pours herself a full cup and drains it in one gulp.

"Well," Mabel puts her hands on her hips triumphantly, and smiles a very wide smile at nowhere in particular, "now I'm awake."

For a moment, both Dipper and Ford look warily at the gleam shining in Mabel's eyes.

(Dipper really hopes Mabel isn't vibrating from the sugar. Ford is staring, aghast, wondering if he should call an ambulance.)

Then, Mabel pivots to leave the kitchen, only to lose her balance and fall flat on her face.

"Mabel?!" Dipper has half-risen out of his seat, about to run to his twin's aid.

Mabel manages a thumbs-up and a muffled, "I'm okay!" through the floorboards.

Dipper relaxes immediately, but Ford isn't completely convinced. He can sense his own tail twitching in agitation again. Mabel, undeterred by her trip to the floor, stumbles out of the kitchen, walking into the door jamb on her way out. Ford's suddenly hit by the urge to shine a flashlight into his great-niece's eyes to check for yellow eyes and slitted pupils.

 _He's gone_ , Ford reminds himself forcibly, paws tightening around his coffee mug. _He can't get through here anymore._

 _He's gone he's gone he's gone he's gone-_

"Great-Uncle Ford, are you alright?" Dipper's voice breaks through the haze of panic, and Ford wrenches himself back into the present to find cold coffee spilling past his fisted paws.

"Uh, yes, Dipper," Ford hesitantly uncurls his paws to find pieces of the white porcelain broken into splinters. "Heh," he laughs nervously, "looks like I don't know my own strength."

Dipper doesn't look convinced, mainly because it sounds like something _Stan_ would say, not _Ford_ , but he lets the matter lie. Or maybe it's because Ford changes the subject. "Is Mabel alright?"

"Oh, that?" Dipper is unconcerned at his twin's worrying display. "She gets like that when she's tired. Well, she doesn't usually get tired, but when she does, she acts like that."

Dipper doesn't mention that it's usually him who gets tired, and when he does, he eats his shirts - usually the ones he's currently wearing. Ford, however, frowns in concern. He's noticed several things about his niblings - and one of them is the following fact:

Dipper is quiet while Mabel is an endless bundle of energy.

Now? Dipper is even _quieter_ and more _tired_ while Mabel's energy is bordering on _manic wakefulness_.

Ford might've only known his niblings for a short time, but even he can tell there's something wrong, although he can't think of exactly what it is. During the daytime, he's around to make sure nothing threatens the children ( _almost adults_ , Ford corrects himself) and at night, Stanley watches over them.

He should know, Ford contemplates, drumming his six claws on the table top. After all, the niblings have spent the past few nights with Stan, and the days with him-

Oh.

Children needed sleep, didn't they?

…

The sun sets, and a loud, satisfied belch echoes across the treetops.

"Ooh, ow," Stan mutters, rubbing at his chest, then clambers down from his perch and back into the Shack. The presence of the Sphinx lying just out of sight on the other side of the roof is unknown to the Gargoyle. Ford, once he's sure Stan's downstairs, scrabbles up the side of the roof, wincing a little at the gouge marks his claws leave behind as a result of clinging onto the roof for an extended period of time. Once Ford reaches Stan's usual perch, he carefully scoops up a few samples of the rock into a glass jar and reaches for a pocket on a coat he's no longer wearing.

(He hasn't worn the coat since his transformation - they don't fit easily over his wings.)

"Drat," the Sphinx mutters, then peers through the opening and into the Shack, checking for any signs of his family. For the moment, the coast is clear, and Ford thinks he might just make it back to his lab without running into them.

His hopes are dashed when he's caught in the gift shop by Stan.

"Ford?" Stan squints into the dimly lit gift shop. "That you?"

Ford immediately positions himself so that the glass jar is away from Stan's (admittedly bad) eyes and tries to discreetly push the jar behind the counter with his hind leg. "Well, do you know of any other Sphinxes?"

Stan rolls his eyes. "Coulda done without the sarcasm."

Ford stays silent, desperately hoping that Stan'll drop the matter and leave, so he can get back to his lab-

"Ya coming to dinner?" Stan shifts to one side, clearing a path for Ford to the kitchen… and away from the lab. In the kitchen, Ford will have no hope of hiding the glass jar and its contents, not with Dipper's watchful eyes and Mabel's tendency to ask questions at the top of her lungs. And then that'll lead to Stan asking uncomfortable questions, like "What the heck are you up to? Why do you have my stone fragments?" and then he'll say something, like, "The kids are getting tired because of you," (and Stan will be offended, like he always is, by the little things) and then things will go _bad_ after such a long time of _hey, Stanley and I are getting along again_.

(A part of Ford wonders when he wanted to be on good terms with his brother again. Another part whispers that he's never stopped wanting it - and that part's instantly beaten up by the other parts and stuffed and locked into a small trunk.)

Ford wonders if Stan can see the beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead in nervousness. "No!"

Stan blinks, a little taken aback at the surprisingly sharp dismissal. There's a moment when Stan looks like he's going to argue, or get angry, but then-

Stan deflates. "Whatever."

Then, the Gargoyle leaves the Sphinx in the giftshop without a second glance.

…

When Ford reemerges from the basement some hours later, he peers into the living room to find the rest of his family on the couch in front of the television and they're all sleeping peacefully.

The single armchair that Stan's kept for a long time in the Shack has long since been discarded. As it turns out, sitting in an armchair with a tail is not exactly the most comfortable thing to do. For starters, there's no place to put the tail without either sitting on it or having it hang uncomfortably over the armrest.

(Turning into a gargoyle also means that a seat can't hug one's butt anymore - gargoyle butts aren't exactly the same shape as human butts.)

Instead, right after Weirdmageddon, if Ford remembers correctly, Stan had thrown out the old armchair and replaced it (technically, Soos had to replace it) with a much more roomy couch.

Right now, Stan's sitting in the centre of the couch, with a younger twin on each side of him. Seeing the strangely domestic scene in front of him, Ford's suddenly hit by a surge of envy. Dipper and Mabel are _his_ niblings too, thank you very much-

 _Sharing is caring_ , Ford suddenly remembers Mabel proclaiming the previous statement proudly two days ago, before flinging a handful of nuts at the squirrels fighting each other for food. The squirrels, of course, hadn't listened, much to Mabel's dismay.

Ford likes to think he's got better social skills than a bunch of squirrels. Maybe.

And that's why he hefts the backpack-like object onto his back, switches on the nozzle of the gun attached by a thick tube to the backpack. The device strapped to his back flickers to life with a low hum, and Dipper blinks awake at the noise.

"Huh-?" Dipper has the chance to say before Ford tugs him off the couch and motions for him to stay quiet. While Dipper watches on in sleepy curiosity, Ford gently lifts Stan's arm from where it'd draped protectively over Mabel, and tugs the girl free and away from the couch.

"Grunkle Ford?" Mabel, mind fuzzy from sleep, yawns, her arms automatically reaching up to hug the Sphinx.

Ford, paws full with the backpack-and-nozzle (and he still hasn't gotten the hang of standing on his hind legs alone - he's forced to go around on all fours if he doesn't want to fall flat on his face), nudges Mabel with his head, taking care to not push her too hard. "Stay quiet, please."

Mabel, perhaps sensing that whatever Ford is about to do won't hurt Stan, (it might annoy him, but it definitely won't hurt), stands to the side with her brother. Or maybe she's too sleepy to catch onto the fact that Ford's aiming some sort of science-y gun at Stan.

"Great-Uncle Ford?" Dipper asks in a whisper, barely loud enough to be heard over the humming of the machine. He's a little concerned for Stan and Ford - for Stan because Ford's device looks like a proton pack, and for Ford because there's no telling what Stan will do to him if he's mad. "What are you doing?"

"Helping Stan," Ford says simply, with a muttered, "hopefully," that everyone ignores. Then, he aims the gun at Stan and flips it on.

…

Sunlight streams through the window of the kitchen, and Stan rolls his eyes as he throws the packet of frozen peas at Ford. Ford manages to pick up the bag and presses it to his purpling eye. "Was it necessary to punch me in the face?"

"I woke up," Stan says threateningly, stabbing the spatula at Ford's direction as he serves Stancakes to Mabel and Dipper, "covered in green goop and you were the cause of it. What was I supposed to think?"

Privately, Ford thinks that being punched in the face is probably justified when Stan puts it that way. Still… "I was trying to help!"

The younger Pines twins watch in careful silence, perhaps sensing that this is something the older twins need to work out amongst themselves.

Or, maybe it's because right after the aforementioned punch, the Gargoyle and the Sphinx had delved into a flat-out brawl in the living room, with angry growls and accusations.

( _You ruined my life!_ \- _You ruined your own life!_ \- _You turned your back on me, you jerk!_ \- _You broke my science fair project!_ \- _Seriously, Ford?! It's been forty-six years! Besides, you turned us into_ _ **monsters**_ _!_ \- _It wasn't_ _ **all**_ _my fault! You were to blame too!_ )

Dipper and Mabel, of course, had steered clear of the thrashing tails and swiping claws, at least until there was a break in the fighting. And at that point, the younger twins had exchanged Looks before latching onto a respective Grunkle each and forcing the two to stop brawling.

("Hug it out!" Mabel shrieks in deafening pitch and volume. Everyone else winces.)

Which leads to them now, the four of them seated tensely in the kitchen in the bright sunlight, and Stan's _not_ turning into stone for once thanks to that strange green goop Ford had covered him with.

(There's still messy smears of green goop in the living room thanks to their little brawl and all through Ford's fur and in the little crevices of Stan's scales, but no one's paying the goop much attention.)

Stan glares at Ford, ready to snap something laconic again, but a quiet _ahem_ from Mabel stops him. He sighs, and picks off a bit of the dried green goop. "What is this gunk, anyway?"

"Er..." Ford thinks of the ingredients he used in the goop. There's a lot of stuff from his dimension-hopping days that has gone into the goop, all of them protective against electromagnetic radiation - more specifically, in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum - and of course he can go into a detailed explanation of what it is exactly, but somehow he thinks he might be punched _again_ by Stan if he doesn't give the answer in something that isn't 'nerd talk'. So, instead, he says, "...sunscreen…?"

Stan rolls his eyes. "And that stops me from turning to stone?"

The temptation is too much and Ford goes off into his explanation. "Well, actually, from the tests I ran on the samples of your exoskeleton I gathered, it appears to be some sort of chemical reaction that activates your biological defenses, more specifically, the epidermal..."

 _Beep boop, I am a nerd robot_ , Stan thinks. Dipper listens with interest. Mabel's eyes are glazing over.

None of them notice what's going on outside.

…

There's a theory of the multiverse.

There's a world for every action taken, and for every choice not made. Each little thing leads to an entirely different universe altogether, and it's quite frankly mind boggling. There might be a universe where Stan never pushes Ford into the portal. There might be a universe where Stan never breaks Ford's perpetual motion machine. There might be a universe where Stanley falls through the portal instead of Stanford.

There might be a universe where the Shapeshifter grows up to be a responsible, non-chaos inducing member of society, but that's a pretty rare occurrence. There might even be a universe where the gnomes are understanding gentlemen who know that _No, I don't want to date you_ literally means _No, I don't want to date you_ and not _Kidnap me and make me your queen_.

(That's even rarer than the respectable-member-of-society-Shapeshifter.)

There's a universe where everyone is evil - but morality is relative, after all, so, _evil_ is a bit of a subjective thing.

There is, however, at least one universe - several, really - where some people grow up to be bounty hunters and set their sights on any Stanford Pines in the multiverse.

There's one Shapeshifter, of Dimension Something-Or-Other, that has his sights set on the Sphinx Stanford Pines of Dimension Whatever-The-Heck-This-Is.

It starts like this: there's a crackle of static electricity, then a small tear manifests itself in the fabric of existence. A claw pokes through curiously, appearing out of thin air. More claws force themselves into the tiny wedge of a tear and pull, straining to make a hole big enough for something to slip through.

Something does.

The Shapeshifter of Dimension Something-Or-Other squeezes through the tear and falls flat on his face. He pulls himself off the ground with a sticky squelch and breathes in the scent of pine needles. Then, he fiddles with the watch on his wrist, until a small holographic map shows up. A red dot blips every now and then on one spot of the map.

"There you are, Stanford Pines," the Shapeshifter of Dimension Something-Or-Other, henceforth known as Shifty of Dimension SOO, smiled ominously to himself. Nothing replies him, except for the breeze whistling through the trees.

"Ah, great. I'm doing the whole talking to myself thing again."

* * *

 _ **AN: Nope, Shifty of Dimension SOO is a loser. He ain't the terrifying Shapeshifter we know and fear. He's still locked in that cryogenic chamber.**_


End file.
